Portland State University President Wim Wiewel

Tag: portland state university

Last week, I sent an all-campus email detailing the action steps that PSU is taking to enhance student cultural and academic support. Those include establishing two separate task forces to assess the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities in serving PSU’s African American/Black/African students and Asian American/Asian/Pacific Islander students.

The two task forces will guide university leadership by focusing on key areas such as academic offerings, student and faculty recruitment and retention, improving campus and community support and developing the two planned cultural resource centers for these student populations.

I and John Fraire, Vice President of Enrollment Management and Student Affairs, would like to invite student, faculty and staff to participate in these task forces. If you are interested, have questions or wish to nominate a member of the PSU community, please email the Office of Enrollment and Student Affairs at emsatf@pdx.edu

The PSU Board of Trustees last week approved a tuition and fee increase for next year. While it troubles me as much as anyone that the cost of higher education continues to rise, it’s helpful to put this latest increase in perspective.

The increase, 3.77 percent for resident undergraduates, is necessary to balance PSU’s budget in the face of rising costs, including additional staff and operating costs, salaries and benefits – traditional cost drivers at any university. Without an increase, we would be looking at budget cuts of nearly $6 million. Cuts of that size obviously would be painful and hurt our goal of increasing student success.

PSU has worked hard to keep tuition hikes reasonable. Since 2011, resident undergraduate tuition has increased by an average of 2.2 percent annually. The cost of attending most other public universities in Oregon has been going up more. With our new tuition rates, only Eastern Oregon University is lower.

Nonetheless, the continued escalation is bound to have an impact on the ability of Oregonians to go to college and get a degree. That is why our new strategic plan calls on us to find innovative and strategic new ways to contain costs and raise revenue.

Measures include the streamlining of processes developed as part of reTHINK PSU; the comprehensive fundraising campaign; and our continued advocacy with the Legislature and Higher Education Coordinating Committee.

We will keep you informed on all these efforts and welcome other suggestions.

Oregon’s public universities are as together as we’ve ever been in our effort to bolster state investment in higher education. This was made clear Thursday, when several hundred students, staff, faculty and alumni from all seven campuses turned out at the Capitol for a show of force and unity.

We spent the day meeting with lawmakers, thanking them for last year’s funding boost and pressing the case that we’re still running behind much of the nation in state support. I can’t say whether we changed any minds, but we made sure that Portland State and the other universities aren’t forgotten this session.

The Legislature is meeting for its every-other-year short session — a 35-day sprint to pass new laws and adjust the two-year budget. Public universities are seeking $15 million in additional funding targeted to juniors and seniors who are doing fine academically but are in danger of dropping out for financial or other reasons. We also are asking for some relatively small capital improvement projects, and an extension of tax credits for the University Venture Development Fund. Finally, we’re asking the legislature to refer a constitutional amendment that would allow public universities to invest some of their funds.

Students, as always, make the best spokespeople for our cause. In one meeting I attended, several PSU students talked to Rep. Margaret Doherty, a Portland Democrat (and PSU alum) and talked about overcoming economic and cultural odds to attend college. They also talked to aides for Sen. Ginny Burdick and Rep. Jennifer Williamson.

One student, Trhona Johnson, said she grew up in a low-income family and “thought college wasn’t possible.” With help from high school and PSU advisors, she enrolled and is now a junior, working toward a degree in social work. Extra funding provided by the Legislature last year has made it easier for her to get the advising and counseling she needs to stay on track to graduate, she told Doherty.

It was one of many messages that resonated Thursday at the Legislature.

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President Wim Wiewel

Hi, and thank you for visiting! I became Portland State University's president in August 2017. I'll spend the next several months learning about the campus community and experiencing the beauty and culture of the city and state. I'll share about those experiences on this blog. A few facts about me:
I hold a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from Sharif University in my native country of Iran. I earned a master's and a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to coming to Portland State, I was the interim president of the New York Institute of Technology, where I earlier served as provost and vice president for academic affairs. My family and I spent many years in Colorado, where I served as dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Denver, and as an administrator and endowed chair and professor of engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Prior to that, I was an administrator and professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. My wife, Azar, and I have two adult children.